Today we visited the beautiful Baroque Benedictine Monastery – Melk Abbey – founded in 1089. The Abbey overlooks the Danube River and is still a working Abbey, without interruption since its founding. It has twenty two Monks aged between 39 and 93 and includes a working high school with about 800 students. The Monks predominantly work in pastoral care and do not teach the children. Due to the tourist industry, it is totally self sufficient with about 500,000 visitors per year.

To get to the Abbey you walk from the carpark down these stairs. I asked our guide to translate and it means: ‘Listen and you will arrive’ – read from the bottom to the top.

Our guide also pointed out the beautiful view of the town of Melk, which sits below the Abbey. It’s a pretty little village of about 5500 residents at the foothills of the Austrian Alps.

The modern blue building you see in the first photo above is the Hospital – built in front of the cemetery. Future proofing perhaps?

Once inside it was forbidden to take snaps so this is all you get peeps. I suggest you actually go. It was truly beautiful and amazing.

Once outside the Abbey we could take some photos which of course we did as we walked around their garden. The Monks have a tradition which began in 1700 of growing pineapples, lemons and bananas – in hothouses of course. They also have a beautiful rose garden. At this time of year nothing too much is blooming so we had to make do with this lot of late bloomers.

The Pink Pavilion we were standing in front of was where the Monks might be sent if they were ill; to spend some time amongst the gardens and recuperate. It has the most beautiful murals painted by Johann W. Bergl, a 17th century artist.

After the Abbey we wandered through the town before heading back to the boat to sail to Durnstein for the afternoon.

I have to say I loved Durnstein. Our afternoon started with a hike up to the ruins of the Durnsteil Castle with our local muso come tour guides Dani and Petra.

The castle was built in the mid 12the century, was blown up by the Swedish at the end of the Thirty Years War, and is most famous for incarcerating the English King Richard the Lion Heart who was only released after a huge ransom of 30 tonnes of silver was paid. So the story goes. The views were amazing.

We then headed into the town centre for some samples of chocolate and Schnapps before grabbing some bikes and making the most of the afternoon sunshine to take a little 6km cycle around the area.

Found a French Monument and a Vineyard.

And some stunning scenery….

And yet, the evening wasn’t quite finished. After visiting the fancy restaurant for dinner, and yes you are going to get food photos…..although I only took photos of half of the courses…..did I mention even my feet had put on weight?…..

It was back to the lounge for a show of Vienna Waltzing. Which happened to require audience participation. MoD being chosen to demonstrate with the beautiful ballerina how ze Man must dance with ze Woman.

It doesn’t get any better than that folks.

Gute Nacht 😴